West Roxbury man charged with pulling out clumps of girlfriend's hair for kissing another guy at a bar

I wonder how editors decide whether to publish stories like this.

A couple gets drunk at a bar. She kisses another guy. He loses his temper and batters her by pulling a handful of her hair out, setting in motion a police response. In short, a couple drinks, fights, and he pulls her hair in a drunken rage. I'm not diminishing the crime. The law protects women from being battered by their boyfriends and visa versa but the question I'm interested in is the news value.

The only part of the story that strikes me as having a news value is the roommates opinion that the victim deserved to be battered - absurd and yet a a "common sense" apologist's opinion. The opinion is not central to the news, it's the element that opens up the story to a debate about social justice, which is what the roommate is trying to argue, as opposed to criminal justice. Know what I mean?